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Cartographers' Guild Purchased

Ladies and Gentlemen of the Cartographers' Guild!

I am pleased to inform you all that due to the popularity and relevancy of this site, we have been bought out! Last week, I began discussions with an "unnamed but interested" party to place a value on the website. I assure you I valued this community extremely high, and then the "unnamed but interested party" made me an offer that I could not refuse!

I have been told that I should not release the name of the buyer, because for marketing reasons I believe they intend to turn this website into one of their products. They have their own marketing strategy set aside for this purpose, and I'd hate to ruin it.

But sometime today, the board may go down for a database export and transition to the new owners. In the meantime, I'm going to go buy a new car!

I did a search through some recent business websites and discovered the name of the (big!) multimedia company that bought the site – and how much they valued it. Whilst I am glad that you managed to make so much money, I am very disappointed that this site is now being commercialised in this way. Although the article stated that commercial elements (subscription, commission, advertising etc.) would not be brought in until after the summer, I am extremely upset and feel like the entire community has been betrayed. I for one will be turning to the new google-maps feature MapQuest for my mapping needs from now on.

First of all congratz! You put a lot of effort in this for years and really deserve this!

I'm very curious however what this means for the guild and whether it will be linked to some company ... Until now the CG was sort of a 'brand', and I made some (albeit small) donations help keep this up and gladly freely posted most of my maps to the site, as I knew it was in good hands... But now that it is being sold, I'm not sure what to make of it ... Maybe you guys could elaborate a bit more on what this means for the members and the guild...?

cheers, DJ

edit: wow, I also did find that website, and it almost sounds too good to be true indeed!

Although the article stated that commercial elements (subscription, commission, advertising etc.) would not be brought in until after the summer, I am extremely upset and feel like the entire community has been betrayed.